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[GUIDE] Spell vamp Akali - The deadliest ninja

When I said snowball, I meant rageblade stacks to maximize it's efficiency. This works better on a hero like Nidalee who can increase the potency of her spears and heals, and can sustain the stacks for free by spamming cougar skills.

I used to do the generic Akali build: Rageblade, Rylai's, Sheen, Zhonya's, Lich, survivability. I swapped Rage for Gun but I'm not sure if I should just get Rylai's after and continue on as normal or not. Gun gives a LOT more survivability.

I tried this build, didn't work for me, and had to quickly make some adjustments.

The first and most immediate problem is early game harass. With the current tank-y-harrass-y-slow-you-down-and-chip-at-you-until-you're-dead metagame, the early game is very hard to deal with. It's an endless stream of cleavers and snowballs and axes and blinding darts and DEMACIAAAAs from the very start, so you need more healing than this build currently provides. That's why I think the default Long Sword is the only starting option; it gives you just barely enough attack power to get a little bit of spell vamp, which allows you to stay in lane, just barely. Otherwise, you're going to be making trip after trip to the fountain for healing and pots, which makes building toward the Cutlass very difficult.

Second, again with the metagame, it needs a lot more HPs and a lot more defense. Akali is *so weak* that she just can't hold up unless she stacks defensive items like crazy. The best Akalis I have seen have stacked items like Frozen Mallet and Rylai's. Yes, spell vamp and lifesteal will help make it through long combats, but you're never going to survive the opening seconds unless you have some HPs and some defense already in place.

Third, again with the metagame, Madred's Bloodrazor seems to be an unfortunate necessity. Too many Garens and Vladimirs and Amumus out there, you just can't count on there being lots of squishies that die quickly. You are going to need to chew through crazy amounts of health, which speaks to both more survivability, and the Bloodrazor. It also gives something to do with the starting Long Sword: transition to Razors while saving up for the Cutlass, then upgrade to Bloodrazor once the high defense items start showing up.

I'm no expert Akali, goodness only knows I'm not, but the current metagame calls for serious adjustment of her playing style. You have to expect to be up against teams that have zillions of hit points and hundreds of slows and stuns and whose strategy is to survive forever while wearing you down.

I tried this build, didn't work for me, and had to quickly make some adjustments.

The first and most immediate problem is early game harass. With the current tank-y-harrass-y-slow-you-down-and-chip-at-you-until-you're-dead metagame, the early game is very hard to deal with. It's an endless stream of cleavers and snowballs and axes and blinding darts and DEMACIAAAAs from the very start, so you need more healing than this build currently provides. That's why I think the default Long Sword is the only starting option; it gives you just barely enough attack power to get a little bit of spell vamp, which allows you to stay in lane, just barely. Otherwise, you're going to be making trip after trip to the fountain for healing and pots, which makes building toward the Cutlass very difficult.

Second, again with the metagame, it needs a lot more HPs and a lot more defense. Akali is *so weak* that she just can't hold up unless she stacks defensive items like crazy. The best Akalis I have seen have stacked items like Frozen Mallet and Rylai's. Yes, spell vamp and lifesteal will help make it through long combats, but you're never going to survive the opening seconds unless you have some HPs and some defense already in place.

Third, again with the metagame, Madred's Bloodrazor seems to be an unfortunate necessity. Too many Garens and Vladimirs and Amumus out there, you just can't count on there being lots of squishies that die quickly. You are going to need to chew through crazy amounts of health, which speaks to both more survivability, and the Bloodrazor. It also gives something to do with the starting Long Sword: transition to Razors while saving up for the Cutlass, then upgrade to Bloodrazor once the high defense items start showing up.

I'm no expert Akali, goodness only knows I'm not, but the current metagame calls for serious adjustment of her playing style. You have to expect to be up against teams that have zillions of hit points and hundreds of slows and stuns and whose strategy is to survive forever while wearing you down.

No offense, but you are doing it wrong. You do NOT get bloodrazer on akali. ever. in the laning phase getting harassed really isn't a problem if you play smart, since you can usually spam alot more than your opponents and you have your stealth to help get close.

Also, this build takes down people like vlad no problem. He may have alot of hp but generally they have low defenses and you burst through them.

I think your problem is you are focusing the tanks or something. What runes did you use?

I tried this build, didn't work for me, and had to quickly make some adjustments.

The first and most immediate problem is early game harass. With the current tank-y-harrass-y-slow-you-down-and-chip-at-you-until-you're-dead metagame, the early game is very hard to deal with. It's an endless stream of cleavers and snowballs and axes and blinding darts and DEMACIAAAAs from the very start, so you need more healing than this build currently provides. That's why I think the default Long Sword is the only starting option; it gives you just barely enough attack power to get a little bit of spell vamp, which allows you to stay in lane, just barely. Otherwise, you're going to be making trip after trip to the fountain for healing and pots, which makes building toward the Cutlass very difficult.

Second, again with the metagame, it needs a lot more HPs and a lot more defense. Akali is *so weak* that she just can't hold up unless she stacks defensive items like crazy. The best Akalis I have seen have stacked items like Frozen Mallet and Rylai's. Yes, spell vamp and lifesteal will help make it through long combats, but you're never going to survive the opening seconds unless you have some HPs and some defense already in place.

Third, again with the metagame, Madred's Bloodrazor seems to be an unfortunate necessity. Too many Garens and Vladimirs and Amumus out there, you just can't count on there being lots of squishies that die quickly. You are going to need to chew through crazy amounts of health, which speaks to both more survivability, and the Bloodrazor. It also gives something to do with the starting Long Sword: transition to Razors while saving up for the Cutlass, then upgrade to Bloodrazor once the high defense items start showing up.

I'm no expert Akali, goodness only knows I'm not, but the current metagame calls for serious adjustment of her playing style. You have to expect to be up against teams that have zillions of hit points and hundreds of slows and stuns and whose strategy is to survive forever while wearing you down.

long sword and bloodrazor are both terribad for akali. You mastery/rune for either 4AD or 10AD and start the game with dorans blade or dorans shield. the 120 HP they give + the health regen/life steal are invaluable for the early game. I personally start w/ dorans shield (with spellvamp passive) as the HP regen is better than the life steal for early game, as well as the free armor you're getting.

@cardboardowl, rageblade is a sub optimal item for akali because she is a burst assassin that tries to get the kill fast before they can react. rageblade requires a wind up period before it gets good. And unlike champs like nidalee, akali cannot charge up the rageblade for free outside of combat. There are much better item choices out there for akali.

No offense, but you are doing it wrong. You do NOT get bloodrazer on akali. ever. in the laning phase getting harassed really isn't a problem if you play smart, since you can usually spam alot more than your opponents and you have your stealth to help get close.

Also, this build takes down people like vlad no problem. He may have alot of hp but generally they have low defenses and you burst through them.

I think your problem is you are focusing the tanks or something. What runes did you use?

I'm not focusing the tanks; the problem is, half the time the whole enemy team is tanks. Who do you start with when their comp is Sion//Garen/Nasus/Vlad/Olaf? (Especially Nasus--the anti-Akali if there ever was one.) Even if they have one or two squishies like LeBlanc or Kog'maw, they won't last long, and you will quickly be to the point of having to deal with the rest of their team with the endless hit points. I hate having to dump money into Bloodrazor, but I don't know what the alternative is when other builds get you only halfway through Garen before you're out of energy and he is just starting his combo on you. It's either save up for Bloodrazor, or run away from the combat after their one or two squishies are dead.

I will try some AD runes and see if that works better than Long Sword; I have been using MPen and defensive runes like Movespeed, I can try a more offensive mix and see how that goes.

long sword and bloodrazor are both terribad for akali. You mastery/rune for either 4AD or 10AD and start the game with dorans blade or dorans shield. the 120 HP they give + the health regen/life steal are invaluable for the early game. I personally start w/ dorans shield (with spellvamp passive) as the HP regen is better than the life steal for early game, as well as the free armor you're getting.

@cardboardowl, rageblade is a sub optimal item for akali because she is a burst assassin that tries to get the kill fast before they can react. rageblade requires a wind up period before it gets good. And unlike champs like nidalee, akali cannot charge up the rageblade for free outside of combat. There are much better item choices out there for akali.

See that's why this build is better. if you go spell vamp she bursts AND has sustained damage. in a teamfight your rageblade will be proced in about two seconds, it rapes towers and it helps versus tanks.

I tried a variation on this build on my smurf (where I have been trying out Akali to see if I liked her enough to dedicate a rune page just for one champ). The smurf is only summoner lvl 15, so improper runes and masteries. However, I did try the 2-gunblade idea out.

My findings was, that I didn't really notice the spell vamp and lifesteal working a lot in the game I tried it. The only time I got into a protracted fight was when I was stuck trying to 1v1 their tank Mundo, which of course I was never able to win for obvious reasons. The rest of the game (after the terrible early game for me, because I kept misjudging my damage output and dying) was spent jumping on the enemy Ryze, Lux, and Tristana and destroying them too fast for lifesteal to be necessary anyway.

The gunblade itself was a sweet item, I had a lot of AD and AP with 2. But I also needed to grab a Rylai's to allow me to chase properly, because the gunblade active by itself wasn't sufficient to chase after I would get rooted by Ryze or Lux, or if I got clipped by a cleaver, etc. I also didn't bother with a rageblade, but the game ended after I got the Rylai's. Didn't have a sheen either, though I probably should have made one.

So all in all, I like the idea of the gunblades, but I'm not seeing where the spell vamp and lifesteal helps outside of topping off between fights.